It's really not about me…

LinkedIn is like that weird uncle that you only see at Thanksgiving or Christmas. You don’t really see him a lot, you never know what he’s going to say, you don’t know what to say to him, and you don’t really know what to do or how to act around him, he’s just been around forever in your family. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is one of the oldest social networks but even today yet most people still don’t know what to do with it and fewer even try.

I’m not here to tell you how to use it because there are tons of sites out there to help you with that and I think like most social sites, we all have different goals and therefore uses for them, but I’ve been on LinkedIn for many years but only in the past year or so have I started paying attention to it more and noticed one very item that I don’t think the typical uneducated LinkedIn user realizes. It shares EVERYTHING to EVERYONE.

In the past 2 years I’ve watched several coworkers connect to recruiters and within months it would be announced that they were leaving us. I don’t think many others in my company pay much attention to LinkedIn, even though almost all of them have an account there, but it’s almost like the most technical geeks that I work with don’t realize the simplest things. I’m not a coder like most of them, but I am aware that almost everything you do online is visible to someone.

If you’re on LinkedIn and connected to coworkers or your boss even, don’t forget to review your privacy settings, especially the activity broadcast one, or maybe even unlink from them while you’re job searching. You never know who weird uncle LinkedIn will tell on you. Pass the green bean casserole please.